‘Just when you thought you understood cloud computing and you knew that human ‘gesture recognition’ was the natural next evolution after ‘touch’, along comes contextual computing. This approach, also known as contextual-aware computing has actually been around for a while and is a combination of software application development, hardware, networks and service-based functions — all these factors come together to give devices a level of situational intelligence based upon their surroundings at a particular time and place. In other words, it’s like computers getting human senses.

We used to think that ‘situational awareness’ was something that only humans, animals and other living creatures had the ability to work out — this is no longer true.’